The discredited “Steele dossier” (which was paid for by the Clinton campaign) formed an essential part of the initial and all three renewal FISA applications to the Federal Court against Carter Page.

Andrew McCabe confirmed that no FISA warrant would have been sought from the FISA Court without the Steele dossier information.

The political origins of the Steele dossier were known to senior DOJ and FBI officials, but excluded from the FISA applications.

DOJ official Bruce Ohr met with Steele beginning in the summer of 2016 and relayed to DOJ information about Steele’s bias. Steele told Ohr that he, Steele, was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected president and was passionate about him not becoming president.

So the Obama DOJ and FBI knew that the “Steele Dossier” was a fraud, a political concoction invented out of whole cloth for the purpose of defeating candidate Donald J. Trump.

They knew that Hillary Clinton’s campaign, and other political actors opposed to his candidacy were behind it.

Yet the FBI withheld this information from the Federal FISA Court — a potential criminal act — so the Court would approve warrants to wiretap Trump and other campaign officials, in order to dig up dirt to 1. help defeat him, and 2. provide material as an “insurance policy” (Peter Strzok’s words) to bring Trump down in the unlikely even he won.

The FBI and Justice Department mounted a months-long effort to keep the information outlined in the memo out of the House Intelligence Committee’s hands. Only the threat of contempt charges and other forms of pressure forced the FBI and Justice to give up the material.

Once Intelligence Committee leaders and staff compiled some of that information into the memo, the FBI and Justice Department, supported by Capitol Hill Democrats, mounted a ferocious campaign of opposition, saying release of the memo would endanger national security and the rule of law.

But Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes never wavered in his determination to make the information available to the public. President Trump agreed, and, as required by House rules, gave his approval for release.

Finally, the memo released today does not represent the sum total of what House investigators have learned in their review of the FBI and Justice Department Trump-Russia investigation. That means the fight over the memo could be replayed in the future when the Intelligence Committee decides to release more information.

Early Friday morning ahead of the memo’s release, Trump blasted DOJ and the FBI.

The top Leadership and Investigators of the FBI and the Justice Department have politicized the sacred investigative process in favor of Democrats and against Republicans – something which would have been unthinkable just a short time ago. Rank & File are great people!